Chapter 3 - The Signature That Moved
Esther opened her apartment door in a charcoal sweater and slippers. She had spent twenty years telling me to sit up straight, finish my education, and ask better questions. Now she stood between me and the apartment with a chain still fastened.
“Emma, your face.”
“Nathan suspended my badge. You signed the letter.”
She released the chain and let me inside.
“I authorized a temporary restriction after company counsel described a confrontation,” she said. “I had not seen the photographs.”
“Would you have believed him if I hadn't brought them?”
Her expression told me how close she had come to doing exactly that.
I showed her the document bearing my name. The signature began with the same loop I used on birthday cards, but the final stroke bent upward. Mine always descended because I'd injured my right wrist at sixteen.
Esther turned the page over. “Your mother chose the age of twenty-nine because she wanted you to make decisions after you'd had time to live away from the company.”
“Then why does Nathan need this by Friday?”
“The protective voting trust ends on your birthday. Until then, I vote your forty-two percent under its instructions. Once it ends, those shares become yours to vote. Unless that direction is accepted.”
She tapped the forged signature with one careful finger.
“What happens at the meeting?”
“Nathan wants approval to transfer the flagship retail operation and license our designs to a buyer called Larkin Group. He says it's the only way to settle our debt. Your vote could decide whether the deal moves forward.”
“He's selling the workshop?”
“He says production would continue under contract.”
My mother had spent decades keeping the workbenches in-house. She'd established apprenticeships for kids who couldn't afford design school, paid health insurance through lean winters, and refused an early buyout that would have scattered her craftspeople.
“Is the company actually in trouble?” I asked.
Esther didn't answer immediately.
“Yes. More than your mother knew near the end.”
That hurt because I had let Nathan handle the business. When Mother died, I'd returned to my own career conserving historical objects at a museum. Nathan told me he'd keep the atelier safe while I grieved. I had believed expertise and trust were the same thing.
“Will you refuse to count the proxy?”
“I will notify the board that its validity is disputed. I cannot make a court's findings myself.”
“Then help me get the records.”
She looked toward the hallway, where a photograph of Mother stood on a narrow table.
“Your mother kept a separate archive in the old workshop basement,” she said. “Nathan has the building keys.”
“So?”
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“So there is a second key. And I have it.”
She placed a brass key in my palm. Beneath its worn teeth, someone had scratched two initials: M.V.
